Saturday 14 August 2010

Wasting precious time.

Towards the end of the week news had reached my ever listening ears that some decent barbel had come out of the wasperton top meadow, the site of my last disastrous barbel session, so I manned up and made the decision to give it an early morning look half with barbel in mind and the dace point as a good back up.

I chose to fish a totally overgrown willow swim thinking that the barbel would be keeping well out of the gin clear open water during the day. After setting up well back from the bank I snuck into position and plopped a spicy chunk of special sausage under the thick willow.
Needless to say I never got a sniff from anything bigger than a overzealous dace, though an angler who I had spoken to as I arrived managed to bag a small barbel of around 4-5lb from the next fish able swim down. So they were in there somewhere.

After four hours of keeping low watching a motionless rod tip I opted to make a move down stream with Rob who had turned up a short while ago. Again the clear weedy Avon looked barren as the kosher section of the Auschwitz cafeteria. So we jumped in the cars and moved down to the mid section of the wasperton stretch.

What a waste of time this turned out to be! I really should have known better than to bother going down into this area. For some reason these deep slow areas of the Avon around here, though they look resplendent in there summer finery, are absolutely useless during the daylight hours. I suspect it is due to most of the resident fishing feeling rather nervous in the gin clear water filled with hungry predators wishing to eat them.

Anyway this was the sum total of nearly six hours of fishing on Sunday morning.

One tiny chulet!

As I drove home disappointed I was pretty pissed off with myself to be honest. At the moment I have developed a real sense of urgency regarding the challenge, as time is running out for some species still left to catch; once the summer months are gone these particular points will be out of reach, so spending time chasing fish or points that will still be attainable two months away in the autumn is a serious waste of precious summertime.

4 comments:

  1. Hehe. It's starting to get to you then Dan!? I remember that feeling well from last year. Tick just keeps on following tock!

    I'm home tomorrow....

    .....got the day off work Monday.

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  2. Dace anytime, barbel good till december if its mild, yep time is running out on the fair weather fish. At least you already have tench, carp and brown goldfish nailed, unlike me...

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  3. I am beginning to think that a couple of them are just not possible. ie. Catfish,grass carp. I tried for the grassies Sunday and they weren't exactly responsive.

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  4. Are you free on August bank holiday monday? Jeff, me - possibly Keith are off for the day to either of these venues:

    http://bishopsbowlfishery.co.uk/index.html

    http://www.westonlawns.net/Weston_Lawns_fisheries/Welcome_1.html

    We haven't decided which one yet but you may be interested in Weston lawns as they stock wells catfish - and they're just up the road at Atherstone!

    Interested? Just let me know!!

    Kev

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